FOURTH SERIES, i8S6. No. 7. 

(DID ^outl) 3lcaficti0f. 



Under the Old Elm. 



From the poetn read at Cambridge on the Hundredth Anniversary of VVash- 
ington's taking Command of the American Army, jd July, /77J. 

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. ' 



I. 
Words pass as wind, but where great deeds were done 
A power abides transfused from sire to son : 
The boy feels deeper meanings thrill his ear, 
That tingling through his pulse life-long shall run, 
With sure impulsion to keep honor clear, 
When, pointing down, his father whispers, "Here, 
Here, where we stand, stood he, the purely Great, 
Whose soul no siren passion could unsphere. 
Then nameless, now a power and mixed with fate." 
Historic town, thou boldest sacred dust, 
Once known to men as pious, learned, just. 
And one memorial pile that dares to last; 
But Memory greets with reverential kiss 
No spot in all thy circuit sweet as this, 
Touched by that modest glory as it past. 
O'er which yon elm hath piously displayed 
These hundred years its monumental shade. 

2. 
Of our swift passage through this scenery 
Of life and death, more durable than we. 
What landmark so congenial as a tree 
Repeating its green legend every spring, 
And, with a yearly ring, 
Recording the fair seasons as they flee. 
Type of our brief but still renewed mortality? 
We fall as leaves: the immortal trunk lemains, 
Builded with costly juice of hearts and brains 
Gone to the mould now, whither all that be 
Vanish returnless, yet are procreant still 
In human lives to come of good or ill, 
And feed unseen the roots of Destiny. 

y.n. 

I. 
Men's monuments, grown old, forget their names 
They should eternize, but the place 
Where shining souls have passed imbibes a grace 



' Reprinted for the Old South Leaflets by special permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mif- 
flin & Co. 



2 . \ ,o, 

Beyond mere earth ; some sweetness of their fames 

Leaves in the soil its unextinguished trace, 

Pungent, pathetic, sad with nobler aims, 

That penetrates our lives and heightens them or shames. 

This insubstantial world and fleet 

Seems solid for a moment when we stand 

On dust ennobled by heroic feet 

Once mighty to sustain a tottering land. 

And mighty still such burthen to upbear. 

Nor doomed to tread the path of things that merely were ; 

Our sense, refined with virtue of the spot. 

Across the mists of Lethe's sleepy stream 

Recalls him, the sole chief without a blot. 

No more a pallid image and a dream, 

But as he dwelt with men decorously supreme. 

2. 

Our grosser minds need this terrestrial hint 

To raise long-buried days from tombs of print : 

" Here stood he," softly we repeat, 

And lo, the statue shrined and still 

In that gray minster-front we call the Past, 

Feels in its frozen veins our pulses thrill, 

Breathes living air and mocks at Death's deceit. 

It warms, it stirs, comes down to us at last. 

Its features human with familiar light, 

A man, beyond the historian's art to kill. 

Or sculptor's to efface with patient chisel-blight. 

3- 
Sure the dumb earth hath memory, nor for naught 
Was Fancy given, on whose enchanted loom 
Present and Past commingle, fruit and bloom 
Of one fair bough, inseparably wrought 
Into the seamless tapestry of thought. 
So charmed, with undeluded eye we see 
In history's fragmentary tale 
Bright clews of continuity. 
Learn that high natures over Time prevail, 
And feels ourselves a link in that entail 
That binds all ages past with all that are to be. 

in. 

I. 
Beneath our consecrated elm 
A century ago he stood. 

Famed vaguely for that old fight in the wood 
Whose red surge sought, but could not overwhelm 
The life foredoomed to wield our rough-hewn helm : — 
From colleges, where now the gown 
To arms had yielded, from the town. 
Our rude self-summoned levies flocked to see 
The new-come chiefs and wonder which was he. 
No need to question long; close-lipped and tall, 
Long trained in murder-brooding forests lone 
To bridle others' clamors and his own, 
Firmly erect, he towered above them all. 
The incarnate discipline that was to free 
With iron curb that armed democracy. 

2. 

A motley rout was that which came to stare, 



In raiment tanned by years of sun and storm, 

Of every shape that was not uniform, 

Dotted with regimentals here and there; 

An army all of captains, used to pray 

And stiff in fight, but serious drill's despair, 

Skilled to debate their orders, not obev ; 

Deacons were there, selectmen, men of note. 

In half-tamed hamlets ambushed round with woods, 

Ready to settle Freewill by a vote. 

But largely liberal to its private moods; 

Prompt to assert by manners, voice, or pen, 

Or ruder arms, their rights as Englishmen, 

Nor much fastidious as to how and when ; 

Yet seasoned stiff and fittest to create 

A thought-staid army or a lasting state : 

Haughty they said he was, at first; severe; 

But owned, as all men own, the steady hand 

Upon the bridle, patient to command. 

Prized, as all prize, the justice pure from fear. 

And learned to honor first, then love him, then revere. 

Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint 

And purpose clean as light from every selfish taint. 



Musing beneath the legendary tree, 

The years between furl off : I seem to see 

The sun-flecks, shaken the stirred foliage through, 

Dapple with gold his sober buff and blue 

And weave prophetic aureoles round th-i head 

That shines our beacon now nor darkens with the dead. 

O, man of silent mood, 

A stranger among strangers then. 

How art thou since renowned the Great, the Good, 

Familiar as the day in all the homes of men I 

The winged years, that winnow praise and blame, 

Blow many names out : they but fan to flame 

The self- renewing splendors of thy fame. 

IV. 



How many subtlest influences unite. 

With spiritual touch of joy or pain. 

Invisible as air and soft as light, 

To body forth that image of the brain 

We call our Country, visionary shape, 

Loved more than woman, fuller of fire than wine, 

Whose charm can none define. 

Nor any, though he flee it, can escape ! 

All party-colored threads the weaver Time 

Sets in his web, now trivial, now sublime. 

All memories, all forebodings, hopes and fears, 

Mountain and river, forest, prairie, sea, 

A hill, a rock, a homestead, field, or tree. 

The casual gleanings of unreckoned years. 

Take goddess-shape at last and there is She, 

Old at our birth, new as the springing hours. 

Shrine of our weakness, fortress of our powers. 

Consoler, kindier, peerless mid her peers, 

A force that 'neath our conscious being stirs, 

A life to give ours permanence, when we 



Are borne to mingle our poor earth with hers, 

And all this glowing world goes with us on our biers. 



Nations are long results, by ruder ways 

Gathering the might that warrants length of days ; 

They may be pieced of half-reluctant shares 

Welded by hammer-strokes of broad-brained kings, 

Or from a doughty people grow, the heirs 

Of wise traditions widening cautious rings ; 

At best they are computable things, 

A strength behind us making us feel bold 

In right, or, as may chance, in wrong; 

Whose force by figures may be summed and told, 

So many soldiers, ships, and dollars strong, 

And we but drops that bear compulsory part 

In tfie dumb throb of a mechanic heart ; 

But Country is a shape of each man's mind 

Sacred from definition, unconfined 

By the cramped walls where daily drudgeries grind; 

An inward vision, yet an outward birth 

Of sweet familiar heaven and earth ; 

A brooding Presence that stirs motions blind 

Of wings within our embryo being's shell 

That wait but her completer spell 

To make us eagle-natured, fit to dare 

Life's nobler spaces and untarnished air. 



You, who hold dear this self-conceived ideal, 
Whose faith and works alone can make it real, 
Bring all your fairest gifts to deck her shrine 
Who lifts our lives away from Thine and Mine 
And feeds the lamp of manhood more divine 
With fragrant oils of quenchless constancy. 
When all have done their utmost, surely he 
Hath given the best who gives a character 
Erect and constant, which nor any shock 
Of loosened elements, nor the forceful sea 
Of flowing or of ebbing fates, can stir 
From its deep bases in the living rock 
Of ancient manhood's sweet security : 
And this he gave, serenely far from pride 
As baseness, boon with prosperous stars allied. 
Part of what nobler seed shall in our loins abide. 



No bond of men as common pride so strong, 

In names time-filtered for the lips of song. 

Still operant, with the primal Forces bound 

Whose currents, on their spiritual round. 

Transfuse our mortal will nor are gainsaid: 

These are their arsenals, these the exhaustless mines 

That give a constant heart in great designs ; 

These are the stuff whereof such dreams are made 

As make heroic men : thus surely he 

Still holds in place the massy blocks he laid 

'Neath our new frame, enforcing soberly 

The self-control that makes and keeps a people free. 



O, for a drop of that Cornelian ink 

Which gave Agricola dateless length of days, 

To celebrate him fitly, neither swerve 

To phrase unkempt, nor pass discretion's brink, 

With him so statue-like in sad reserve. 

So ditfident to claim, so forward to deserve ! 

Nor need I shun due influence of his fame 

Who, mortal among mortals, seemed as now 

The equestrian shape with unimpassioned brow. 

That paces silent on through vistas of acclaim. 



What figure more immovably august 

Than that grave strength so patient and so pure, 

Calm in good fortune, when it wavered, sure. 

That mind serene, impenetrably just. 

Modelled on classic lines so simple they endure ? 

That soul so softly radiant and so white 

The track it left seems less of fire than light, 

Cold but to such as love distemperature? 

And if pure light, as some deem, be the force 

That drives rejoicing planets on their course. 

Why for his power benign seek an impurer source ? 

His was the true enthusiasm that burns long. 

Domestically bright. 

Fed from itself and shy of human sight. 

The hidden force that makes a lifetime strong. 

And not the short-lived fuel of a song. 

Passionless, say you .'' What is passion for 

But to sublime our natures and control 

To front heroic toils with late return, 

Or none, or such as shames the conqueror? 

That fire was fed with substance of the soul 

And not with holiday stubble, that could burn, 

Unpraised of men who after bonfires run. 

Through seven slow years of unadvancing war, 

Equal when fields were lost or fields were won, 

With breath of popular applause or blame. 

Nor fanned nor damped, unquenchably the same, 

Too inward to be reached by flaws of idle fame. 



Soldier and statesman, rarest unison; 

High-poised example of great duties done 

Simply as breathing, a world's honors worn 

As life's indifferent gifts to all men born ; 

Dumb for himself, unless it were to God, 

But for his barefoot soldiers eloquent, 

Tramping the snow to coral where they trod, 

Held by his awe in hollow-eyed content; 

Modest, yet firm as Nature's self; unblamed 

Save by the men his nobler temper shamed ; 

Never seduced through show of present good 

By other than unsetting lights to steer 

New-trimmed in Heaven, nor than his steadfast mood 

More steadfast, far from rashness as from fear; 

Rigid, but with himself first, grasping still 



In swerveless poise the w ave-beat helm of will ; 

Not honored then or now because he wooed 

The popular voice, but that he still withstood; 

Broad-minded, higher-souled, there is but one 

Who was all this and ours, and all men's, — Washington. 



Minds strong by fits, irregularly great. 

That flash and darken like revolving lights. 

Catch more the vulgar eye unschooled to wait 

On the long curve of patient days and nights 

Rounding a whole life to the circle fair 

Of orbed fulfilment ; and this balanced soul, 

So simple in its grandeur, coldly bare 

Of draperies theatric, standing there 

In perfect symmetry of self-control, 

Seems not so great at first, but greater grows 

Still as we look, and by experience learn 

How grand this quiet is, how nobly stern 

The discipline that wrought through lifelong throes 

That energetic passion of repose. 



A nature too decorous and severe, 

Too self-respectful in its griefs and joys, 

For ardent girls and boys 

Who find no genius in a mind so clear 

That its grave depths seem obvious and near, 

Nor a soul great that made so little noise. 

They feel no force in that calm-cadenced phrase. 

The habitual full-dress of his well-bred mind. 

That seems to pace the minuet's courtly maze 

And tell of ampler leisures, roomier length of days. 

His firm-based brain, to self so little kind 

That no tumultuary blood could blind. 

Formed to control men, not amaze. 

Looms not like those that borrow height of haze : 

It was a world of statelier movement then 

Than this we fret in, he a denizen 

Of that ideal Rome that made a man for men. 

VI. 



The longer on this earth we live 

And weigh the various qualities of men. 

Seeing how most are fugitive. 

Or fitful gifts, at best, of now and then, 

Wind-wavered corpse-lights, daughters of the fen, 

The more we feel the high stern-featured beauty 

Of plain devotedness to duty, 

Steadfast and still, nor paid with mortal praise, 

But finding amplest recompense 

For life's ungarlanded expense 

In work done squarely and unwasted days. 

For this we honor him, that he could know 

How sweet the service and how free 

Of her, God's eldest daughter here below. 

And choose in meanest raiment which was she. 

2. 

Placid completeness, life without a fall 



From faith or highest aims, truth's breachless wall, 
Surely if any fame can bear the touch. 
His will say " Here ! " at the last trumpet's call, 
The unexpressive man whose life expressed so much. 

VII. 
I. 

Never to see a nation born 

Hath been given to mortal man. 

Unless to those who, on that summer morn, 

Gazed silent when the great Virginian 

Unsheathed the sword whose fatal flash 

Shot union through the incoherent clash 

Of our loose atoms, crystallizing them 

Around a single will's unpliant stem. 

And making purpose of emotion rash. 

Out of that scabbard sprang, as from its womb, 

Nebulous at first but hardening to a star. 

Through mutual share of sunburst and of gloom, 

The common faith that made us what we are. 

2. 

That lifted blade transformed our jangling clans. 

Till then provincial, to Americans, 

And made a unity of wildering plans ; 

Here was the doom fixed ; here is marked the date 

When this New World awoke to man's estate. 

Burnt its last ship and ceased to look behind : 

Nor thoughtless was the choice; no love or hate 

Could from its poise move that deliberate mind, 

Weighing between too early and too late 

Those pitfalls of the man refused by Fate: 

His was the impartial vision of the great 

Who see not as they wish, but as they find. 

He saw the dangers of defeat, nor less 

The incomputable perils of success; 

The sacred past thrown by, an empty rind ; 

The future, cloud-land, snare of prophets blind; 

The waste of war, the ignominy of peace ; 

On either hand a sullen rear of woes, 

^Vhose garnered lightnings none could guess. 

Piling its thunder-heads and muttering " Cease I " 

Yet drew not back his hand, but gravely chose 

The seeming-desperate task whence our new nation rose. 

3- 

A noble choice and of immortal seed ! 

Nor deem that acts heroic wait on chance 

Or easy were as in a boy's romance; 

The man's whole life preludes the single deed 

That shall decide if his inheritance 

Be with the sifted few of matchless breed. 

Our race's sap and sustenance. 

Or with the unmotived herd that only sleep and feed. 

Choice seems a thing indifferent; thus or so. 

What matters it .? The Fates with mocking face 

Look on inexorable, nor seem to know 

Where the lot lurks that gives life's foremost place. 

Yet Duty's leaden casket holds it still, 

And but two ways are offered to our will. 

Toil with rare triumph, ease with safe disgrace, 

The problem still for us and all of human race. 



He chose, as men choose, where most danger showed, 

Nor ever faltered 'neath the load 

Of petty cares, that gall great hearts the most, 

But kept right on the strenuous up-hill road. 

Strong to the end, above complaint or boast : 

The popular tempest on his rock-mailed coast 

Wasted its wind-borne spray, 

The noisy marvel of a day; 

His soul sate still in its unstormed abode. 



Washington's Resignation. 

His Address to Congress at Annapolis, December 2j, Jy8j. 

The great events on which my resignation depended having at length 
taken place, I have now the honor of offering my sincere congratulations to 
congress, and of presenting myself before them, to surrender into their hands 
the trust committed to me, and to claim the indulgence of retiring from the 
service of my country. 

Happy in the confirmation of our independence and sovereignty, and 
pleased with the opportunity afforded the United States of becoming a re- 
spectable nation, I resign with satisfaction the appointment I accepted with 
diffidence ; a diffidence in my abilities to accomplish so arduous a task, which, 
however, was superseded by a confidence in the rectitude of our cause, the 
support of the supreme power of the union, and the patronage of heaven. 

The successful termination of the war has verified the most sanguine 
expectations ; and my gratitude for the interposition of Providence, and the 
assistance I have received from my countrymen, increases with every review 
of the momentous contest. 

While I repeat my obligations to the army in general, I should do injus- 
tice to my own feelings not to acknowledge in this place the peculiar services 
and distinguished merits of the gentlemen who have been attached to my per- 
son during the war. It was impossible the choice of confidential officers to 
compose my family should have been more fortunate. Pertnit me, sir, to 
recommend in particular those who have continued in the service to the pres- 
ent moment, as worthy of the favourable notice and patronage of congress. 

I consider it as an indispensible duty to close this last act of my official 
life by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of 
Almighty God, and those who have the superintendance of them to his holy 
keeping. 

Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great 
theatre of action, and bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body, 
under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission, and 
take my leave of all the employments of public life. 



The completest and most interesting Life of Washington is that by Irving. The 
admirable Life by Chief-Justice Marshall will alwavs have a special interest as the work 
of a great man who knew Washington well. Sparks prefixed a biography to his edition 
of Wasliingion's Writings, and this has been published separately and is one of the best. 
A good briefer biography is that by Everett ; and the addresses and essays on Washington by 
Kverett, Webster, Winthrop, Whipjile, and Theodore Parker are important. The volume 
of " Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington," by George Washington Parke 
Custis, Mrs. Washington's grandson and the boy of the Mt. Vernon household, gives vivid 
and valuable impressions of Washington's private life and character. See also the article by 
Parton, "The True and Traditional Washington," in the Magazine of American History, 
1879. Headley's " Washington and his Generals " contains brief biographies of Greene, 
Gates, Putnam, Wayne, Schuyler, and all of the leading generals of the Revolution, and there 
exist important separate lives of many of these. The chapters on the Army of the Revolution 
and the Campaigns of the Revolution, in Greene's " Historical View of the American Revo- 
lution," throw much light on the military conduct of the war. The younger readers hardly 
need to be reminded of Coffin's " Boys of '76 ; " and none must forget liow often the poets 
and the story-tellers liave devoted themselves to Revolutionary themes. For the fullest 
information concerning all books relating to the Revolution, the student is referred to 
Winsor's "Reader's Handbook of the American Revolution. " 



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